Keith Sullivan, age 10, of Casper, Wyo., for his question:
HOW DID WYOMING RECEIVE ITS NAME?
Wyoming, one of the Mountain states, entered the Union on July 10, 1890 as the 44th state. In area, it is the ninth largest state. The state's name, which is taken from the Wyoming Valley of northeastern Pennsylvania, is an anglicized form of a Delaware Indian term meaning "place of the big plain."
Wyoming is bound on the north by Montana, on the east by South Dakota and Nebraska, on the south by Colorado and Utah and on the west by Utah, Idaho and Montana.
The Indians who lived in what is now Wyoming before the coming of the Europeans included the Shoshoni, Crow, Cheyenne and Arapaho. In 1803 the land east of the continental divide, except for a portion of what later became the southwestern corner of the state, was acquired by the United States from France as a part of the Louisiana Purchase.
The first white man definitely known to have entered the Wyoming region was a fur trapper named John Colter. He traveled up the Big Horn River in 1807.
In 1811 the region was explored by members of a fur trading expedition led by a frontiersman named Wilson Price Hunt, and the following year some members of the same expedition returned to the region and discovered the South Pass through the mountains.
In 1846 the northwestern corner of the Wyoming region, which had been part of the disputed Oregon country, was relinquished by the British. And in 1848 the southwestern part was ceded to the U.S. by Mexico. In 1850, another area in what is now the southern part of the state was purchased by the U.S. from Texas.
Indian resistance to white encroachment was ended in 1868 and in the same year, with a population of 60,000, Wyoming was created as a territory.
In 1869 Wyoming became the first division in the nation and possibly in the world to grant women the right to vote.
The construction of the Union Pacific Railroad across the territory in 1867 and 1868, the discovery of gold in the same years and the availability of cheap land through the Homestead Laws stimulated settlement of the territory.
In the ensuing years Wyoming became an important cattle raising region.
Wyoming was the first state to have a woman governor. It happened when Nellie Tayloe (CQ) Ross was elected to complete her deceased husband's term of office (1925 1927).
According to the 1980 census, Wyoming's population has increased 41.: percent over 1970. During this period Wyoming was one of the fastest growing states in the country.
The continental divide runs diagonally across the state from the northwest to the southeast. The area west of the divide (about one quarter of the state's area) drains to the Pacific Ocean, primarily by the Snake and Green rivers and their tributaries. The major rivers east of the divide are the North Platte, in the south, and the Belle Fourche in the north, both of which flow to the Mississippi River, and the Yellowstone, Bighorn and Powder rivers, all of which flow northeast into the Missouri River.